There are 3 key factors that is disrupting the Residential Real Estate Market like never before. Firstly, it is the Emergence of Millennials and their exodus to metros for better job opportunities and better quality of life. However with city infrastructure crumbling, Millennials happen to be one of the most underserved segments in India and often compromise on traffic, security and comfort. Secondly it is the Huge Inventory of Unused (~12 million) and Unsold Properties (~1 Million) in Cities. Commercial Real Estate focus shift on providing single large campuses and area development opportunities has consolidated home rental demands. Thirdly it is the Macroeconomic changes caused due to Real Estate Regulation & Development Act (RERA), Goods and Services Tax (GST) and Demonetization which has permanently changed the landscape of Real Estate Market.
All this has shifted the spotlight from Buy/Sell to Rentals which has led to the emergence of technology enabled online rental companies like Nestaway, Zolo, Stanza, YourOwnROOM and others who are focused on providing rental solutions to millennials including students, working professionals and young families.
YourOwnROOM that was founded by Stanford Business School alumnus Prabhat Kumar Tiwary along with Sachin Joshi and Rewat Laxman, has raised $750K funding from a group of angel investors from US and India over the last few months.
“Our investors are senior executives and experienced industry leaders based out of the USA and India. They come with very deep expertise in running global organizations, technology, and real estate businesses,” said Prabhat Kumar Tiwary, Co-Founder and CEO of YourOwnROOM.
One of the lead Investors, Ravi Chaturvedi, former President, P&G and former Group Chief Executive, Jet Airways said, "The residential rental market in metros is highly fragmented, unorganised and, frankly, not dedicated to delighting the customer on the demand side. The people who rent out their premises worry about the property's security and sustained returns. YourOwnROOM's mission is to consistently deliver a delightful customer experience to the renter, and build a trusted, financially rewarding relationships with the home-owners, thus creating great value for all stakeholders. This, for me, is a great recipe for building a sustainable and differentiated business in a cluttered space."
This fund has been used to consolidate the company’s position in Bangalore and Pune across Co-Living and Family homes. Existing funding has enabled YourOwnRoom to acquire more inventories in both cities with infusion in the sales and marketing activities. Good chunk of their investments has been routed to technology platform.
“One of YourOwnROOM’s biggest differentiator is the scalable technology platform that they have built which focuses on customer retention and operation efficiency which becomes very important as they scale to other cities and offerings,” said Narasimha Murthy, Investor in YourOwnROOM and Co-Founder of a Health Tech company.
YourOwnROOM operates about 1.5K beds across Bangalore and Pune. “Our biggest achievement so far has been our ability to build, understand and optimize a scalable business model supported with our technology platform with no compromises to customer delight. This has contributed to our annualized sales run rate of over $1M and order booking of $2M,” said Sachin Joshi, Co-Founder and Chief Sales and Technology Officer.
YourOwnROOM is aiming at onboarding several full building properties in the year 2018-19 to meet a larger demand and need for safe strategically located homes.